


almost human

by fluffysfics



Series: punk rock never dies, and neither does the Master [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: But the fun kind, Drug Use, F/M, Found Family, M/M, Peer Pressure, punk Master, the Master’s time on Earth, vague Hurt/comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:20:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23580733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffysfics/pseuds/fluffysfics
Summary: June, 1978. 42 years until he meets the Doctor again.For the first time in centuries, the Master finds that he has real friends. He’s not sure how to feel about that.
Relationships: The Master (Dhawan)/Original Male Character(s), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Series: punk rock never dies, and neither does the Master [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1696336
Comments: 13
Kudos: 56





	almost human

**Author's Note:**

> I’d recommend reading the first fic in this series before this one, but it’s not essential by any means!

Harry Marsters lay on his back with his head hanging over the edge of the bed, staring up at the ceiling. For once, his long black fringe wasn’t dangling in his eyes. His bright red t-shirt was rucked up around his stomach, one arm was flung out to his side, and his purple-socked feet were resting on the stomach of another man. 

The man in question was several inches taller than him, with bright green hair that was usually impeccably spiked into a mohawk several inches above his head. Today, it fell in a shaggy mess around his ears, where it was currently being lightly petted by a small, blonde woman also curled up on the bed, who was in turn being held in place by the strong arms of a woman whose short black hair was spiked just as much as usual, but the generally fierce expression on her face was softer. 

At least three of these four people were stoned out of their minds. 

The fourth person was Harry, whose real name was not Harry. His real name was unknowable, but his _title_ , at least, was the Master, and the Master was currently wishing that human drugs could do more for him than the vague, relaxed buzz he’d been feeling for the last half an hour. 

It had been Cricket who’d brought the drugs in the first place. Cricket’s real name was not Cricket, either, but none of the other people on the bed could have told you what his real name _was_. He liked the sport, someone had found that fact funny, and so the nickname had stuck. Or maybe it was because his hair was as green as a cricket. Much like ‘the Master’, the origin of the name ‘Cricket’ was as much myth as it was truth. 

May and Tasha had just happened to be visiting when Cricket had come to show off his latest acquisition. They came over a lot, and had been doing so for nearly a year now. At least once a week since last July, when the Master had first met them on a rainy night in Islington outside the bar that had become his second home. It was June now, June 1978, and the days of his long imprisonment on Earth were slipping by faster than they ever had before. 

Which led him to now, gazing lazily up at the slow, vague patterns of smoke swirling in the sunbeams from his bedroom window. 

It had taken the Master a long time to get used to the company of humans. He’d never thought he could _enjoy_ it. But something about these people, this little family he’d found, made everything about his imprisonment so much more bearable. 

Not all humans were as fond of moralising and _doing the right thing_ as the Doctor’s little pets were. Some of them were angry, empathetic, _rebellious_ , and they understood him better than anyone, save for a strange little boy back on Gallifrey all those years ago, ever had. 

“...Look at us. All cuddlin’ up together.” Tasha’s blonde head popped up, looking them over with a hazy grin. “Well. Guess me an’ May are doing the cuddling. Harry. Cricket. _Cuddle more_. ‘S the law now.”

“Fuck the law,” the Master grumbled, which earned him a vague appreciative cheer from both May and Cricket. 

“Harry can’t cuddle anyone,” May piped up. “He’s _still_ hung up on his ex.” 

The Master threw a pillow at her, and she cackled delightedly at having riled him. 

“...You should tell us about your ex. You never do.” Cricket prodded one of the feet that the Master had been resting on his stomach, and the Master shot him a very reproachful ‘ _not you too_ ’ sort of look. 

“We don’t even know ‘er name,” Tasha said, seeming gleeful that she’d managed to start a conversation even through everyone’s stoned haze. 

Ugh. Maybe he should take back the nice things he’d just been thinking about humans. 

Except...he really hadn’t had anyone to complain to about the Doctor for longer than he could remember, and the three humans lying on this bed with him might be more sympathetic than anyone else he’d ever meet again. He should stop calling them humans. They were his _friends_. 

“Her name was J-“ Wait, no, John Smith wasn’t an alias he could use anymore. Humans and their gendered names. “Jade. Her name was Jade.” 

“Oh my _god_ , Harry’s gonna talk about his ex.” May sat bolt upright faster than should be possible for someone who’d smoked as much weed as she had. “Sorry Tash, gotta watch this.” 

Tasha just grumbled quietly, propping her head up in her girlfriend’s lap instead. 

“I am _not_ going to talk about my ex,” the Master objected. 

Cricket sat up too, leaning over him with a beseeching look that was only slightly ruined by the mass of green hair that suddenly flopped into his face. The Master couldn’t help himself, he had to grin at that. It was...cute. 

“Fine. Maybe I am going to talk about my ex.” He sat up, and found himself met with three pairs of eyes looking about as eager as stoned humans could look. 

“Go on, then. _Spill_.” Cricket rested his chin on one hand, flicking his hair out of his face. Behind him, May and Tasha looked just as curious. The Master wondered just how often he’d accidentally made vague references to the Doctor, for his friends to be _that_ hung up about this. 

“She wasn’t a bad person,” he started, and then hesitated. Why was he defending her? He didn’t need to prove moral superiority; these people liked him already. “She...did some bad things to me, though. We did a lot of shit to each other.”

The Master closed his eyes, and tipped his head back. “We knew each other when we were kids. Made one of those promises, that we’d escape our home together and travel the sta- world. Ridiculous stuff, but...kids. Yeah. We were together a long time, on and off, after that. Every time we’d get together, I was... I was _so_ in love. But we’d hurt each other.”

He opened his eyes again, and found everyone staring at him with absolutely rapt attention. Mentally, he added ‘good storyteller’ to the list of traits this regeneration apparently had. Then again, maybe a bunch of stoned punks weren’t the best judge of his storytelling skills. They were the only audience he wanted, though. 

“There was one time, quite recently, where I...tried doing things her way. Tried seeing the world like she did, doing everything I could to be like her. I thought it was working, but then she...she abandoned me again.” The Master curled his fists in his blankets, pressing down the anger that threatened to cut through the light fog over his mind. He did _not_ want to be clear-headed for this. 

“The most recent time we were together again, I hurt her. Lied to her, right to her face, because I _wanted_ to hurt her. And it worked, she was hurt. Didn’t feel half as good as I wanted it to. Then she turned around and hurt me right back. Took everything I had. Left me, and I don’t... I don’t know when I’ll ever see her again.” The Master did know. 42 years. But by then, he’d have long since moved on from these people, as much as that thought made something in his chest ache if he lingered on it for too long. 

“Shit,” Cricket said, eloquently. May nodded in very sage agreement. Tasha was still staring at him, wide hazel eyes slightly wet with tears. She reminded him so much of the Doctor sometimes. He looked away. 

“I’m sorry. Tha’s so... _shit_. Didn’t know ya’d been through anythin’ _that_ bad.”

“It wasn’t all because of her. We both fucked each other up,” the Master said, laughing bitterly. “And there were good times. Some really, really- _fuck_ , I need to stop defending her.” He slumped back against the bed, closing his eyes again. He didn’t trust them not to fill with tears if he left them open; this body got emotional far too easily. 

For a minute, there was silence. It dragged on a second too long, and then the Master heard a stifled giggle from Tasha. He cracked an eye open, and Cricket froze, having clearly been about half a second from poking him in the nose. 

The Master did not pout. He also didn’t _not_ pout. He swatted Cricket’s hand away, sitting up. 

“You wanted to hear about my ex. I told you about her, and now you’re just trying to _prod_ at me?” He scowled. 

“Lighten up, Harry, we’re too stoned to fight with each other.”

Cricket grinned. “If _May’s_ telling you to lighten up, you know you need to listen. She’s, like, the queen of being all serious and brooding.”

“Fuck the queen,” May retorted. “And fuck you.”

“Oi.” Tasha reached up, poking her in the chin. “Ya just said you were too high to fight. Shut it.” 

The Master sighed. He couldn’t stay angry at these people. That, in and of itself, was a rare thing. Almost every conversation with a human had his blood boiling, had him hating the Doctor’s guts for daring to strand him on this filthy backwater planet. But these three...they made him see why she was so fond of humanity. 

“All of you, stop bickering,” he said, looking around at his friends. “I’m fine.”

Tasha sat up, studying his face. She looked like she was on the verge of asking if he was _really_ fine, which wasn’t exactly a question that the Master wanted to answer. 

“If ya knew Jade since you was a kid, does that mean ya never kissed anyone else?”

Well, that wasn’t the question he’d been expecting. Drugs clearly didn’t lend themselves well to logical questioning; he really should have known that. 

“I, um...” He, the Master, had kissed plenty of other people. Not recently, though. Not in this body. Shit, he hadn’t kissed _anyone_ in this body. “Yeah. Just her.” 

Tasha shrieked with delight. “Oh my _god_. I volunteer. Lemme show you how kissing _should_ be done.”

“Oh, no you don’t.” May grabbed her arm, making sure she couldn’t move from where she sat. The Master was reminded of the first night they’d met, Tasha’s incessant flirting and May’s somewhat resigned possessiveness. Things never changed with those two. 

“No one needs to _volunteer_ , I’m _fine_ ,” the Master insisted. 

“We’ve known you for almost a year and you’ve never shown any interest in another girl,” May pointed out. “That’s not fine, that’s obsessive. You’re _obsessed_.”

“I am _not_ -“ The Master bit his tongue, forced himself not to snap at her. She didn’t mean any harm, she was his friend, he was just- he was just used to defending himself. Change the subject, quick. “Who’s to say I haven’t been showing interest in _boys_ when you’ve not been looking?”

Cricket glanced up at that, tilting his head curiously. “Are you- I mean, _have_ you?” 

The Master shrugged innocently. 

“Knew you was too pretty to be straight,” Tasha piped up from where she’d settled back into May’s lap. “Knew it the moment I saw ya.”

“You did not,” May said, shaking her head fondly. Tasha blew a raspberry at her. 

“So ya like boys too. But you’ve never kissed one. Are you _sure_? I’ve kissed lotsa boys. And lotsa girls. Tha’s how I’m sure.” 

“You’re not kissing anyone else _now_ ,” May reminded her, because of course she did. 

“I’m pretty sure,” the Master said, resting his hands on the bed behind him and leaning back. Truthfully, he actually wasn’t entirely sure where this body’s preferences lay. With the Doctor, always with the Doctor, but aside from that- sometimes he was a lot more into men, sometimes it was women, sometimes he couldn’t give a damn. Maybe he should experiment a little. 

“Cricket’s being very quiet,” May pointed out. 

“Am not!”

“Cricket’s always quiet,” the Master reminded her, although he did note with interest that his friend’s face had turned a light shade of pink that clashed very nicely with his hair. 

“Yeah. What Harry said. I’m _fine_.” 

Tasha sat up again. “You two should kiss.”

“Wha- _why_?” Cricket’s face deepened to a proper shade of red. He looked to May for help, who shrugged with an ‘I’m staying out of this one’ expression. Tasha was nearly unstoppable when she got an idea in her head. 

The Master, for his part, was quite enjoying the little show in front of him. Just because these humans were his friends didn’t mean that he couldn’t enjoy watching them squirm a little bit. 

“You should! ‘Cause Harry’s never kissed a boy, and you’re the only boy here who ain’t Harry. Go on.” Tasha shoved at Cricket’s arm. He was the best part of a foot taller than her, so it didn’t have much of an effect. 

The Master looked between all three of them, and shrugged. “I’m down for it if you are.” His casual tone betrayed the sudden prickling feeling of _wrongness_ in his stomach. After spending so long reviling humans, to willingly be intimate with one... 

He squashed down the revulsion. This was his friend. He turned to Cricket, tilting his head with that sweet smile that had melted the Doctor’s heart back when he’d been O. 

“Oh, whatever. What’s the point of drugs if you don’t do stupid shit while you’re on them?” Cricket shook his head, leaned in, and a second later the Master felt warm lips press against his own. 

It was a little clumsy at first, a little awkward, and then suddenly it _wasn’t_. The Master found a rhythm, remembered how to kiss people, and immediately wondered why he hadn’t done this sooner. He could have passed so much more time on Earth so much faster if he’d just found himself some pretty humans to snog. 

He reached up, grabbing a fistful of messy green strands, feeling a shiver pass through him as Cricket let out a soft noise at the touch. This was nice, this was _hot_ , this was- not at all private, was it?

The Master broke away, finding May and Tasha both staring at him with interest. 

“Oh, don’t stop on our behalf,” May said, grinning. “That was just getting interesting.” 

“Shut up,” the Master said, wiping his mouth with the back of one hand. He looked up at Cricket, who was still flushed, and now appeared to be staring at him in a daze. “For _his_ sake, let’s stop talking about kissing. Pretty sure we can definitively say that I’m into men.” 

“Yeah, that’s an understatement. You really don’t fuck around with kissing, do you, Harry?” May sounded almost _approving_ , which was unexpected coming from her. 

“I suppose I don’t.” He lay back against the bed, tucking one arm behind his head. The Master looked over at Cricket, who was still blushing, and wondered if they’d get another word out of him for the rest of the afternoon. “...I want chips. Let’s go get chips.” 

——

It was nearly midnight before the Master had his flat to himself again. The relatively limited effects of what was a pretty weak human drug anyway had long since worn off, but the pleasant buzz of conversation, of having _friends_ , had kept him going happily enough. 

Now, he sat on the end of his bed, staring at himself in the small, dirty mirror that was propped against the wall opposite. Red t-shirt, ripped jeans, fringe that was falling into his eyes. _Human_. He looked human. And somehow, that didn’t bother him half as much as it ought to. 

The Master touched a finger to his lips, remembering how it had felt to have someone else pressed against him. How it had felt to hear the beating of one heart so near to his own two, to feel the desperate heat from a human body that wanted a lot more than it was allowed to take. 

The only part of him that didn’t look human were his eyes. Those were still old, and sad, and so impossibly angry. The Master stared into them in his own reflection, let his own gaze bore into himself, burn through him, until he couldn’t stand it any longer. 

He shut his eyes, falling back against the bed, and wondered what the Doctor would think of him now. 

**Author's Note:**

> what do people think of these characters? should I write more with them? personally I’m really enjoying writing this series, I’d love to know what other people think, please feel free to drop a comment with any thoughts <3


End file.
